Patrick Degan wrote:Here's another one: Gorky Park (1982) —William Hurt is a Soviet police detective tracking several vicious murders which took place in Moscow and his trail leads him to a fur-smuggling ring run by Lee Marvin. Excellent film and a good murder mystery. Includes Brian Dennehey in a good supporting role as a New York police detective on Marvin's trail.
I've read the original book years ago and of course it is superior to the movie, although Stas Bush may laugh at it like he laughs at Tom Clancy hack thrillers featuring Russians. Another similar cop story set in an oppressive regime was
Fatherland by Robert Harris, which could also be classified as dystopian sci-fi too, since it is set in a victorious 1960s Third Reich (also made into a weak TV movie starring Roy Batty).
While it is primarily to do with a hitman, I can also recommend
Collateral and it features a likeable street smart LAPD officer.
NCIS is not quite a patch on
CSI, but I really like David McCallum and Pauley Perrette, even if their roles in most episodes are comparatively small.
The only courtroom drama I had any time for was
Shark fronted by James Woods and Seven of Nine, but despite netting more viewers than
L&O on it's worst evenings and understandably getting disrupted by the Writer's Strike, the geniuses at CBS decided to cancel it.